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diff --git a/68184-0.txt~ b/68184-0.txt~ new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1a94c87 --- /dev/null +++ b/68184-0.txt~ @@ -0,0 +1,701 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 68184 *** + + DARK DAWN + + By Henry Kuttner + Writing under the pseudonym Keith Hammond. + + [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from + Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1947. + Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that + the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] + + _Blinded by an atomic blast, Dan Gresham + joins forces with the radiant Swimmers + to preserve an undersea civilization!_ + + +The _Albacore_ was eight hundred miles out of Suva, feeling her way +through the Pacific toward a destination unmarked except on the charts. +She was a Navy cruiser jury-rigged into a floating laboratory, Navy +manned, but carrying a dozen specialized technicians as passengers. + +For days she had waited outside the danger area, till circling planes +radioed word that the test atomic blast had apparently subsided. Then +the _Albacore_ went into a flurry of preparations. It was a miracle that +the watch had sighted Gresham in his rubber boat, and a triple miracle +that he was alive. + +His eyes bandaged, he sat out on deck, while Black, the neurologist, +leaned on the rail beside him and stared aft. Presently Black took out a +pack of cigarettes, automatically held it out to Gresham, and then +remembered that the man was blind. + +“Cigarette?” he said. + +“Yes, thanks. Is that you, Dr. Black?” Gresham’s voice was very low. + +“Uh-huh. Here. I was watching that shark. He’s followed us from Suva.” + +“Big one?” + +“One of the biggest I ever saw,” Black said. “That’s the baby who tried +to take a chunk out of you when we picked you up. He kept biting at our +oars!” + +“A pity he didn’t get me,” Gresham said. He tossed the cigarette away. +“No use. If I can’t see the smoke, I can’t enjoy it.” + +The neurologist studied his patient. + +“We don’t know that you’re permanently blinded, after all. This is so +new.” + +“I was looking straight at it,” Gresham said bitterly. “It must have +been miles and miles away, but I could feel it burning my eyes out in +one flash. Don’t tell me!” + +“All right. I won’t. But this is a completely new type of atomic blast. +It isn’t uranium. It’s a controlled chain reaction based on an +artificial element—there must be new types of radiation involved.” + +“Fine. The next time there’s a war, we can blind everybody.” Gresham +laughed grimly. “I’ll be sorry for myself for a few months, probably. +Then I’ll get a Seeing-Eye dog and become a useful member of society +again. Huh!” He paused. When he spoke again his voice was different, +doubtful, as if he didn’t quite realize he spoke aloud. “Or maybe not,” +he said. “Maybe I’ll never be—useful—any more. Maybe I’m not just +imagining....” + +“Imagining?” Black said, interested. “What?” + +Gresham jerked his bandaged face away. + +“Nothing!” he declared sharply. “Forget it.” + +Black shrugged. “Tell me about yourself, Gresham,” he suggested. “We +haven’t had much time yet to get acquainted. How did you happen to be +out here just now?” + + * * * * * + +Gresham shook his head irritably. “Just at the wrong spot and the wrong +time? Maybe it was meant that way from the start. Predestination—how do +I know? Oh, I had enough after the war. I bummed around the islands. +I—like the sea.” His voice softened. “Like isn’t strong enough. I love +the sea. I can’t stay away from it. There’s a fascination—I signed on +here and there as a deck-hand, a stevedore—I didn’t care what. I just +wanted to soak myself in the big things. Sun and sea and sky. Well, I +can still feel the sun and the wind, and I can hear the water. But I +can’t see it.” + +There was no real conviction in the way he finished that last sentence. +He turned his bandaged eyes a little to Black’s left and his face grew +strained, as if he were looking at something far out at sea. + +“You know about the radar sonics, don’t you?” the neurologist said. + +“Oh, sure. I’ll learn to bounce a radar beam around me and keep from +walking into walls. But—” Gresham’s voice died. He seemed to be staring +as if through the bandages and his own blindness at something far away. +In spite of himself Black turned to follow that blinded stare. And at a +great distance off he saw, or thought he saw something in the glare of +the sun-track splash water and dive.... + +“Dr. Black,” Gresham was saying in that strained, doubtful voice. “Dr. +Black, how are you on psychiatry?” + +“Why, fair.” Black kept the surprise out of his tone with an effort. +“Why?” + +“Have you noticed any symptoms of—aberration in me?” + +“Nothing unusual. Nervous shock, of course. That atomic blast catching +you certainly would have caused a strain.” + +Gresham said, “After the blast went off I floated for I don’t know how +long before you picked me up. I—started to imagine things. Delirium, +you could say. But I don’t know. I—forget it, will you? Maybe later +I’ll feel like talking. Just forget I said anything, Dr. Black.” + +After all, there was nothing to talk about, to put into coherent words. +For what had happened was inexplicable. It was part of the terra +incognita that the key of nuclear energy had unlocked. + +Even Daniel Gresham, drowsing the years away in his tropical lotuslands, +could not help hearing about the new atomic experiments. He had stopped +keeping track of time back in 1946, because around the archipelagoes +time was a variable, and hours could last for seconds or months, +depending on whether you were at a _kava-kava_ festival with the +golden-skinned Melanesians or simply stretched flat on the warm deck, +while white canvas billowed overhead and waves splashed quietly along +the keel. + +But the radio wouldn’t stop talking. It talked about the uranium piles +constructed for experiments, and the new lithium hydride methods, and +the technicians who were endlessly charting, testing, studying—and +finding fresh mysteries always beyond. And this latest test—a +completely new type of atomic blast, one that had never existed before +on earth, except, perhaps, so long ago that the planet was a white-hot, +molten mass. + +Briefly, the holocaust had blazed out and vanished. But it had left +traces in the instruments planted in the path of the fury, and it had +left its trace, too, in an intricate, sensitive instrument cage inside +Daniel Gresham’s skull. + +Thoughts can be measured; they are electric energy. The machine that +transmits them can be functionally altered. And, adrift on his raft, +Gresham had found a very strange substitute for his lost vision.... + +The _Albacore’s_ boat came back with recording instruments from a +floating buoy, and Black paced slowly up and down the deck, studying a +coil of paper and trying to ignore the piping of sea-birds that flapped +overhead, and the look of strained attention on Gresham’s face. It +didn’t belong there, on a blind man’s face. Gresham sat as he had sat +yesterday, bandaged eyes turned toward the sea beyond the boat as if he +could see something out there invisible to ordinary eyes. + +“Doctor, what does that look like out there?” he asked suddenly. + +Startled, Black followed the direction of his pointing finger. + +“Why, a porpoise, I think. It—no, now it’s gone.” He stared at his +patient in amazement. “Gresham, are you still blind?” + +Gresham laughed softly. “There’s a bandage over my eyes, isn’t there? Of +course I’m blind.” + +“Then how did you know about the porpoise?” + +“It isn’t a porpoise.” + + * * * * * + +Black took a long breath. “What the devil’s the matter with you, +Gresham?” he said. + +“I wish I knew. I—” Gresham’s voice hesitated. Then he said with a +sudden rush, “You could call it hallucination. I can see things. But not +with my own eyes.” + +“Yes?” Black’s tone was hushed. He was terribly afraid of interrupting +this mood of explanation. “Go on.” + +“Right now, for example,” Gresham said in his soft voice, “I’m seeing +this ship, from about half a mile away. I can see the smoke, and the +little figures on deck. I can see myself, and you. From a distance. Once +in a while a wave blocks my sight. You’re holding something white.” + +Black stared off into the blue distance, where what had seemed a +porpoise had broken water once and vanished. He could see nothing but +ocean now. + +“I told you I started imagining things on the raft,” Gresham went on. “I +kept seeing things from different angles. I knew I was blind, but there +were flashes ... green vistas ... blue sky and white clouds....” + +“Memory. Imagination.” + +“It isn’t a porpoise,” Gresham said. + +Black made an effort and pulled his mind into better coordination. + +“Now listen,” he said. “All right. You were in the direct path of some +new radiations. These figures—” He rustled the paper in his hand. “They +don’t check exactly. There _was_ an untyped form of radiation in this +area after the atomic blast. But—” He went off at a tangent. “It isn’t +a porpoise? What is it, then?” + +“I don’t know. It’s intelligent. It’s trying to communicate with me.” + +“Good Heavens!” Black said, genuinely startled now. The look he bent +upon Gresham was dubious. + +“I know, I know.” Gresham must have sensed in the silence that doubtful +glance. “Maybe I’m making it all up. I did spot the—porpoise—but maybe +my hearing’s improved. The rest—well, I haven’t got any proof except +what I know I’ve seen—and felt. I tell you, it’s something intelligent +out there. It’s trying to communicate and it can’t.” He rubbed his +forehead above the bandages, his face taking on the old look of strain. +“I can’t make sense out of it. Too—alien, I guess. But it’s trying +hard....” Suddenly he laughed. “I can imagine how you’re looking at +me. Would you like to try some tests, Dr. Black? Knee-jerks, maybe?” + +“Come on below with me,” Black said briefly. Gresham laughed again and +got up.... + +An hour later they were back on deck. Black looked worried. + +“Listen, Gresham,” he said earnestly. “I don’t know what’s happened to +you. I admit that. The encephalogram was—puzzling. Your brain emits +radiations that don’t check with anything we’ve seen before. Some +peculiar things are possible, theoretically. For instance, a radio isn’t +really likely to pick up transmitted waves, but it does. And telepathy’s +theoretically possible. Suppose your brain has been altered a little by +your exposure to the atomic blast. There are powers latent in the human +mind, new senses that we know little about.” + +“I suppose you have to find new words for it,” Gresham said as Black +stumbled and paused. “But I don’t care what the scientific diagnosis is. +I can see again. Not with my own eyes. But I can see.” + +He was silent for a moment, and to Black it seemed that the blind man’s +whole face looked rapt, as if he gazed upon things more beautiful than a +man with eyes ever saw. When Gresham spoke, his voice was rapt, too. + +“I can see!” he repeated, almost to himself. “I don’t care what else +happens. Something alive and intelligent and—and desperate is near me. +I see through its eyes. Its thoughts are too different to understand. +It’s trying to tell me something, and it can’t. I don’t care. All I care +about is seeing, and the things I see.” + +He hesitated. + +“Beautiful,” he murmured. “All my life I’ve loved beautiful things. +That’s why you found me out here, in the tropics, away from cities and +ugliness. And now!” He laughed a little and his voice changed. + +“If I could see your face, I wouldn’t be talking this way,” he said. +“But I can’t, so I can say what I feel. Beauty is all that matters, and +in a way I’m glad even this has happened, if it means I can go on seeing +things like—like this.” + +“Like what?” Black leaned forward tensely. “Tell me.” + +Gresham shook his head. “I can’t. There aren’t any words.” + +The two men sat silent for awhile, Black frowning and studying the rapt, +blind face before him, Gresham staring through his bandages and through +the eyes of another being, at things he could not speak of. + +Something glistened among the waves, very far away, turned over in the +water and sank again. + + * * * * * + +The next morning, Gresham did not awaken. To Black it resembled +catalepsy. The man lay quietly, his heart faintly beating, his +respiration almost stopped. Once or twice a ripple of motion crossed his +features and he grimaced. But that was all. He lay for a long while, +half-alive. + +But he was double alive, triply—a hundredfold—elsewhere. + +Around dawn it began to happen to him, he thought afterward. He felt +first a something reaching out for him. His internal vision kept +catching glimpses and then snapping shut again like a camera lens. There +was a thought, beating against a barrier, trying to get through to him. +But it was too alien. It could not reach through. + +Gresham’s half-sleeping mind could not understand. He reached out into +other minds around him, seeking contact. Bird minds—sparks of life +rising and falling on the winds, dim, formless bits of cloud. And other +small minds, in the waters, vague, weaving through green voids. But in +the end he always came back to the Swimmer. + +And in the end, the Swimmer must have realized it could not communicate, +knew at last there was only one way left. It had to show him what it +wanted to tell. And there was only one way to show him. + +So it swam down, down in the pearly light of dawn, with the sea and sky +an enormous emptiness and the _Albacore_ a small dark shape miles away, +and Gresham’s body hidden within it, asleep, while his mind sank with +the Swimmer through the fathomless seas. + +Down and down, into the great deeps under the atolls, where abysses lie +deeper than Everest is high. The Swimmer could plumb them, for the +Swimmer was not human. Intelligent, yes, but—different. Life under the +waters would follow a different course from life in the air. And cities +under the sea would be very different, too. + +Gresham had never known this feeling of bodily freedom before. He shared +with the Swimmer the physical sensation of motion in a supporting medium +through which he could move freely in any direction. It was a strange, +strong body that housed his mind temporarily, but no visual image of it +formed. + +There were sensations of indescribable difference—a smooth, flowing, +muscular thrust that exploded into bursts of action as he drove +downward. And an aching, straining discomfort gradually ceased as he +sank. The race of the Swimmer was meant to live in the pressure of the +deeps, and now the pressure began to fold in comfortingly. Once more the +Swimmer’s body felt completely its own, and that deep, sensuous pleasure +made it take an intricate path downward, as a bird plays in its own +element or a dolphin gambols in the waves. + +The dark began to close in. But Gresham began to be aware of a new, +strange light from below, an unearthly dawn, in a light-band no human +eyes could ever see except in this incredible manner. He could never +describe the color of the abysmal dawn, a tremendous slow brightening of +sunless day permeating the vastness of underseas. + +Shadows of the deep water swam past, shapes of terror and mystery and +fantastic beauty. Once the leviathan bulk of the great whale went by, +and once a goblin picnic of tiny colored lanterns—fish with luminous +spots driving in an insanely gay flight before the shadow of a barracuda +that swept like death after them. + +But the sea-bottom was dark. Perhaps only in some spots was this land of +veiled shadows to be found. The immense glow of the submarine dawn drew +itself in and focused on small areas as Gresham’s mind went downward +with the Swimmer. And then a gargantuan black wall, without top or end +or bottom, loomed before him. + +Perspective swung round dizzily, and Gresham saw that it was no topless +wall, but the bottom of the sea. Crags lifted from it. Atolls and hills +jutted into the faint fringes of light, crawling with weeds, blanketed +with undersea growth. But the great plain and the valleys were in +shadow. + +Anchored by glowing ropes that vanished in darkness below, swung +latticed spheres of light. There were dozens of them, like shining toy +balloons expanding in size as the Swimmer swept nearer and nearer. +Across the lattices a troubled whirling ran, shaking vortices of +darkness that made the spheres fade and brighten like lanterns, and then +pulse into dimness again. + +The Swimmer’s headlong sweep, like flight through green air, carried +Gresham straight toward the nearest globe. Between the lattices an +opening like a shutter widened, gaped, closed. + +And this was a city of the underseas. + + * * * * * + +For five days Gresham’s body lay all but motionless in his bunk on the +_Albacore_, while the ship drove forward over fathomless abysses where +Gresham’s mind moved among mysteries. Dr. Black spent as much time as he +could spare beside the cataleptic sleeper, watching the vague shadows of +expression that moved now and again across his face—wonder, sometimes +revulsion, sometimes strain and dread. But only the shadows of the real +emotions which Gresham’s mind knew, far away. + +On the fifth day he woke. + + * * * * * + +Black saw his hands rise quickly to the bandaged eyes, and Gresham sat +up abruptly, making an inarticulate sound in his throat. His face for a +moment was wild with dismay and horror. + +“It’s all right,” Black said quietly. “It’s all right, Gresham. You’ve +been asleep and dreaming, but you’re safe now. Wake up!” + +“Safe!” Gresham said bitterly. “Blind again, you mean. And—” His face +convulsed once in a grimace of revolt; then he had himself under control +and his hands which had been clawing futilely at the bandage as if they +could pull away blindness from his eyes, fell quietly to the blanket. + +“What was it?” Black asked. “You were dreaming? Would you like to tell +me?” + +It did not come all at once. The story covered many days in fragmentary +sessions, but in the end Gresham told. + +“You’ll find a diagnosis to cover it,” he said to Black. “You’ll have to +decide I’m a schizophrenic—is that the word—and I’m having +hallucinations. It doesn’t matter to me. I know what happened. There +were cities down there....” + +He had never known true beauty until he moved with the Swimmer through +those incredible floating towns under the water. Our own race, chained +by fetters of gravitation to the ground, never knew such wonders. Our +bodies have been deformed, unsuccessful adaptations ever since we +learned to walk upright. But a species without enslavement to gravity, +developing in sheer beauty and sheer freedom, perfectly adapted to their +green aquaeous world, had come into existence underseas. + +“They can build as they like,” Gresham said softly. “Gravity doesn’t +affect them, you see. There were houses—if you could call them +houses—made in spirals and coils and spheres. They can float free +within the globes if they like. Some of the houses move in orbits. Some +of them—oh, I can’t tell you. I lived there with them for a long while, +but I can’t describe them and I can’t tell you what the people were +like. There aren’t words. + +“He had to take me down to make me understand what he wanted. The +Swimmer, I mean. But his city, like his mind, is too alien to tell +about. I can only say it was beautiful, the kind of beauty I’ve loved +all my life and tried to find for years. I’m going back down there, +Black.” + +“Why?” Black had a note-pad on his knee and his pen was moving smoothly +across it as Gresham’s quiet voice went on. “Tell me about it, Gresham.” + +“It was the atomic explosion,” the blind man said. “The radiations +released some sort of balance, away down there, and their machines +aren’t working as they should any more. That’s what caused those +whirlpools of darkness in the light and made the lattices around the +cities shake. And they need the lattices. They have an enemy down +there—another race, or maybe a branch of their own race. + +“It’s strange to think of wars going on down there just as they have +here, and one race enslaving another, as the Swimmer’s people did. I +thought at first they were—well, call it evil. I saw how they ruled. +Evil is a foolish word. The Swimmer people are so beautiful and strong +and wild, you can’t apply our rules to their lives. I lived among them. +I saw that other race, in the dark of the sea-bottom, banished from that +wonderful, strange light a human couldn’t even see. + +“At first I thought it was cruelty that kept the—the others—enslaved. +And then I happened to see one of the Others.” His voice faltered and a +shadow of revulsion crossed the bandaged face. “I saw what was left +after a minor uprising, and I saw how the Others kill, and what they +look like. After that I knew. If the decision were mine, I’d exterminate +them all. I can’t help that feeling. It’s instinct. There are things too +degenerate to live. + +“It’s all been going on down there for I don’t know how many centuries, +how many milleniums. Think of it, Black! Empires rising and falling, +races ruling and races enslaved, sciences developing along lines we’ll +never understand and nobody guessing it until the Swimmer came to the +surface. + +“His race is intelligent. They must have realized the new radiations and +the explosion had come from another intelligent race. They’ve seen +sunken ships and drowned men, they knew we lived here in the air. But +they’re so alien ... No communication is really possible between us. +If it weren’t for the accident that did—whatever it did—to my brain, +no human might ever have known. + +“Well, I’m going back. There’s trouble down there. They need help.” +Gresham paused and laughed harshly. “Why do I keep thinking I can help +them? I can’t even share their thoughts. All I can do is find some +creature to take me down into the depths, so I can see with its eyes. I +can watch, if I can’t help. I can move through those wonderful cities +again, and see the Swimmer’s people.” His voice faltered and he gave his +mind up for an instant to the memory of that race and its beauty and +wildness and strange, alien enchantment. + +“The Swimmer himself had to stay,” Gresham said. “The machines—you’d +never guess they were machines to see them—weren’t working well. All +who could had to help the machines, help to keep the dark race—the +Others—away from the cities. So the Swimmer’s mind let go of mine and I +had to come back.” + +“What can you do?” Black asked. “Is there any way to get in touch +again?” + + * * * * * + +Gresham turned his blinded face toward the ocean. He was silent for a +moment. + +“That shark,” he said. “The big one. He’s still following us.” + +Black had to rise and lean over the rail to make sure. + +“Yes, I can see him now. He’s with us.” + +“That’ll do,” Gresham said confidently. “An intelligent mind can control +a non-intelligent one for awhile. I’ll take the shark’s body and go +back.” + +“You’re tired, Gresham,” Black said. “We can talk about this later. I’m +going to give you a sedative and I want you to rest.” + +Gresham laughed. “See that gull up there? What would you say if it +circled three times and landed on the rail beside you?” + +Black looked up. The gull sailed in one wide circle, two circles, +three—and swooped down toward the rail. Its yellow feet gripped and +closed and it perched there turning its head from side to side and +looking at Black with eyes that fantastically seemed to him for a moment +Gresham’s eyes, as if the blind man in the bird’s dim brain looked out +and saw him. + +Gresham laughed again. + +“You’ve got a notebook on your knee,” he said. “You have no idea how +queer you look through a bird’s eyes, Black. All out of focus and +strange.” + +“Let it go,” Black said in a choked voice. The gull tipped forward and +spread its wings, its eyes going blank again with mindless +bird-thoughts. + +“Yes,” Gresham said. “The shark will do....” + +Black sat beside the bunk and watched the sleeping face of the blind +man, his own mind in a turmoil. He could not believe or accept Gresham’s +story, but in spite of himself he found images slipping through his +brain as he saw emotions flicker across the cataleptic face. He saw the +green abysses gliding by, he saw the nameless undersea dawn brightening +in the depths, felt the great shark’s body bend its banded muscles and +drive on and on toward a city of floating spheres that illuminated the +dark like lanterns lighted by no human hands. + +Suddenly Gresham sat straight up among the blankets. The blood rushed +into his face and he said, “Huh!” in a choked, inarticulate voice. + +“Gresham?” Black said, laying a hand on his arm. “Are you awake? What is +it?” + +He was not awake. He did not turn his head or feel the hand or hear the +voice. All his faculties were focused on something very far away, deep +down in the abysses beneath the boat. He was like a man in a nightmare. +His breath came fast now, through bared teeth, and his face convulsed +into the lines of a man fighting for his life. + +“The dark!” he said thickly. “The dark! Where did the lattices go? +What’s wrong? Oh, what’s happening here?” But that was the last +articulate speech he made, and the last words Black had time to hear, +for suddenly Gresham began to struggle violently with the blankets, +striving to throw them off, lashing out with clenched fists whenever +Black tried to hold him. + +In the end they had to strap him to the bunk to keep him from injuring +himself and those around him. He lay there struggling furiously, resting +in panting silence and then fighting against the restraining bands +again. His face was wild with a ferocity that sent cold shivers through +Black’s mind, a less than human ferocity. + +And in the writhing of his body against the straps, in the way it bowed +and lashed straight again, and the strangely fluid motions of his +struggle, Black tried not to think he saw the movement of a shark’s body +fighting in deep water against an alien foe. + +“Blood!” Gresham muttered, deep in his throat. “Blood—so much +blood—can’t see, but—there’s another—kill, kill! Kill them all!” + +And it seemed to Black that the little cabin was dark with the dark of +the undersea and blinded with blood that spread through the dim water, +and boiling with the terrible combat of an unknown struggle. + +He knew to an instant when the shark died. He could tell by the last +spasmodic convulsion of Gresham’s body on the bed, the double lashing +motion and the sudden silence. He even thought he saw for an instant the +blankness of death itself flicker across Gresham’s face, the brush of it +touching the edges of the mind that had controlled the shark’s mind. + +After that there was only silence, and the slumber of deep +exhaustion.... + +“It was too late,” Gresham said. His voice was a whisper, hoarse from +the shouting he had done through his nightmare. His body was bruised +from struggling against the straps, and his mind was sick and tired. + +“It must have been too late from the moment the explosion went off, if +anyone had known. But they still hoped. They sent the Swimmer up and +they brought me down, hoping until the last I could do something.” He +laughed briefly, a croaking sound in his raw throat. “I might have known +it was too wonderful to last. The cities and the people—they were never +meant for human eyes to see. I was lucky to get even the one glimpse I +had. And maybe it’s just as well. The two cultures never could have met. +If there were any way for humans to reach them, we’d only have destroyed +their culture as we’ve destroyed everything else that’s beautiful. As +we’ll destroy ourselves, when the time comes. + +“We did destroy them, Black. The explosion did it. And maybe this was +the best way, quick enough, after all.” + +“But what was it? What happened?” + + * * * * * + +The face beneath the bandages was grim. + +“I went down with the shark. I could see from a long way off that +something had gone wrong. Only a few of the cities were lighted, and one +of them flickered out as we came near. And in the underwater dawn-light +I could see black shapes, shambling. + +“If it hadn’t been for the dark people, the slaves, I think they might +have won. They were getting the machines under control again, you see. +In the last city the machine might have held out, if the Others hadn’t +already been in the city. + +“I made the shark swim closer, in through one of the dark cities +where I’d gone with the Swimmer. Once it was full of lights and +spiral dwellings, beautiful, lithe people gliding among the floating +orbits of their homes. Now it was dark. I couldn’t see much—thank God. +But the ... black ... figures shambling through those hollow cities, +among the floating bodies of the beautiful dead Swimmers, horrified +me.” Gresham bit his lip and was silent. + +After a while he went on. + +“There was still fighting going on around the last lighted place. I made +the shark swim into it. I could help, at least, that much. + +“The Swimmers fought with curved blades of light that slashed through +everything they touched. They were wonderful fighters—terrible and +wonderful. I never saw such ferocity and such beauty. But the Others +were too many for them.” His voice cracked for an instant. + +“The Others were foul, degenerate, dark _things_,” he said, and choked +over the words. + +“Here, drink this,” Black commanded, holding a glass to Gresham’s lips. +Gresham drank, and rested for a moment. + +“That was all,” he said presently, in a calmer voice. “I watched it end. +I helped as much as I could.” He grinned faintly. “It was one of the +Swimmers who killed the shark, finally. They didn’t understand, of +course. They must have thought it was just another of the scavenger fish +who were gathering because of the blood. The curved light-blade sheered +through it like steel—or fire—fire under water—and the shark died. +Well, it was time for me to go, anyhow. I’d done all I could, then. But +this isn’t the end of it.” + +“What do you mean?” Black demanded. Then he said quickly, “Never mind. +You’ve got to rest now. You can think it over and tell me later.” + +“I don’t need to think. Remember what I told you when I first saw the +Others? How hateful they are even on first sight? Instinct, Black, sheer +instinct tells you to kill them on sight. I—I don’t know why, but +that’s what I’m going to do next.” He clenched his fist and struck the +blanket lightly. + +“Extermination!” he said in his hoarse, strained whisper. +“Extermination!” + + * * * * * + +A week later the _Albacore_ passed a group of tiny islets lying like +scattered flowers on the water. Native outriggers came out, as usual, to +offer fruit and gossip. Gresham seemed to know them. He talked briefly +in Kanaka, and there was much nodding and liquid chatter among the +natives. When the outriggers went back, Gresham went with them. + +“I know what I want,” he told Black as the neurologist helped him over +the rail. “I’m all right now, physically. Or as much as I’ll ever be. +I’m a responsible man—you can stop worrying about me. I’ve even got +enough money put aside for what small needs I’ll have from now on. +Forget about me, doctor. And thanks—thanks very much.” + +Doubtfully, and with a touch of strange, illogical envy, Black watched +him go. + + * * * * * + +The globes that once swung glowing on their cables in the abyss swing +dark now. Below them the night land of the sea-bottom stretches far away +into a light that shines eternally, a light no human eyes will ever see. +Inside the cities which are tombs now, the beautiful bodies of the +dwellers float hollow-boned, bare skeletons cleansed by the wandering +denizens of the sea. The dead race lies forever entombed in its dead +cities. + +But a race still lives among them for awhile. A dark, alien race that +destroyed its masters and shambles now among the ruins it made. Death +lives with that race. + +Out of the immense ocean dawn above the ravening sharks come down +silently, one by one, to kill and kill—and be killed. And on an island +high over them, in the daylight he cannot see, a blind man sits on his +beach with his strange sight focused in another world. A world of water +and darkness and death. + +He is not blind as other men are blind. He has a thousand eyes to see +through. He had a vengeance to wreak. Some day that vengeance will be +sated, when the last dark shambler dies. After that, Gresham will be +content. He will give up his days then to looking at the world again +through the strange, small lenses of other brains, and to the memory of +beauty which he once saw so briefly, in the hour of its destruction, and +will never see again. + +In comparison to the memory of that beauty, all other men are blind. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 68184 *** |